Bankruptcy auction under way for Brunei's disgraced playboy prince

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Bankruptcy auction under way for Brunei's disgraced playboy prince

Associated Press Aug. 11, 2001

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei - After making a tour through one of the world's most bizarre debtor auctions today, Lim Ah Kiong issued his verdict on the extravagant lifestyle of the Brunei royal family.

"So expensive, so wasteful," the taxi driver muttered, after walking past rows of gold-plated Jacuzzis and shower heads, porcelain flamingo statues and gilded trash bins. "Now, it has brought shame to Brunei."

For decades, the Brunei royal family has figured in the lists of the world's richest people, coffers topped up by oil and gas reserves in their tiny enclave on Borneo island in Southeast Asia.

Their profligacy has been legendary, from hotels purchased in Singapore, London and Paris for use on frequent trips abroad, to flying in beauty queens from all over the world for parties on yachts.

But today, a playboy prince was selling instead of buying, taking a step toward cleaning up mountains of debt - a legacy of the Asian economic crisis in 1997-98 that nearly drove the country to bankruptcy.

Local and international creditors still smarting from fizzled construction projects and dud investments hope to recover at least part of their losses from the auction.

"We expect virtually everything to go," Mark Isaacs, a senior official in Smith Hodgkinson, the British auction group organizing the event, told The Associated Press. "They are very salable items."

In a plaster factory piled high with eclectic opulence, the legacy of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, a younger brother of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, is on display for ordinary subjects and bidders.

About 10,000 items belonging to Jefri's bankrupt development corporation, Amedeo, started going under the hammer today in a six-day auction expected to raise up to $50 million, just a small portion of the billions owed to local and foreign creditors.

More than 500 bidders were seeking bargains on gilded toilet paper holders, new fire engines, aircraft simulators, slabs of marble, factory equipment, crockery and cutlery, and enough chandeliers and lamps to light Versailles. Even the factory is for sale.

John Chia, Singaporean businessman based in Brunei, lost 10 bids, mostly on furniture and for a bronze-plated, eight-foot high Trojan horse, which went for $1,470.

"I am just trying to buy something simple like a sofa seat," said Singaporean businessman Othman Ali. "It is more of the novelty of buying something linked to the royalty."

Public tenders and negotiations with selected parties are being worked out to dispose of a multi-million-dollar marquee complex and simulators for a Comanche helicopter, an Airbus jet and a Formula 1 racing car.

For years, Amedeo had been the vehicle for Brunei to put in place much of the modern infrastructure it now has - a sports stadium, international convention center, golf course, hotels, marina, hospital and roads.

The auction has triggered debate among Brunei's 300,000 people - most of whom live on the oil money paid out by the sultan in the form of civil service jobs - over who is to blame for Amedeo's collapse.

The prince "was lavish, but he also brought development," remarked businessman Hairi Mohamad Yusuf. "He is being made the scapegoat."

The auction follows a lawsuit brought against Jefri last year for the disappearance of $16 billion from national coffers. In an out-of-court settlement, the prince agreed to return money taken from the national investment agency, once under his charge.

The prince now lives in London and Paris. Creditors have tried, and failed, to serve him in another multi-million-dollar civil action.



-- (decacence@doesn't.pay ----for anybody------ever), August 11, 2001

Answers

neither does decadence.

-- (im @ dumb .shit), August 11, 2001.

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